Munich Personal RePEc Archive The daily battles of Antonio de Viti de Marco Mosca, Manuela Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Economia - University of Salento (Lecce, Italy) 2 July 2013 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/47963/ MPRA Paper No. 47963, posted 02 Jul 2013 17:22 UTC The daily battles of Antonio de Viti de Marco* Manuela Mosca Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Economia University of Salento (Lecce, Italy) email: [email protected] Abstract: This paper analyses the economist Antonio de Viti de Marco’s collaboration with the daily press, in relation to his scientific work and in the context of early twentieth century Italy. It brings out De Viti’s proposals for free trade and fiscal policies intended to support the development of the southern regions of Italy, as well as his critical attitude towards the public sector and its decision making processes. It also highlights his political activities and commitment, an important aspect of his achievement, yet all but unknown outside Italy. Keywords: Antonio de Viti de Marco, history of economics, Italian marginalism, daily newspapers, economic policies J.E.L. Classification: B1, B31, D72, F13, H3, R11 1. Introduction De Viti de Marco is too well known in political, historical and economic literature for any biographical background, however brief, to be called for here; we refer the reader to other sources1. * This paper was presented at the 40th annual meeting of the History of Economics Society, Vancouver, Canada, June 22, 2013; it is part of a wider research project on “Economics and public opinion in Italy in the Liberal Age (1875-1925). The economists, economic policy and the daily newspapers", directed by Massimo Augello. I would like to thank Giovanni Pavanelli, Cosimo Perrotta, and an anonymous referee for their constructive advice. Of course, the final responsibility is mine. I especially wish to thank Daniela Giaconi for the precious assistance she provided in finding sources for me. In this paper the translations of the quotations are mine. 1 Biographical information on De Viti de Marco can be found in L. Einaudi, Prefazione in Principi di economia finanziaria, Torino, Einaudi, 1934; E. Rossi, A. de Viti de Marco uomo civile, Bari, Laterza, 1948; G. Salvemini, De Viti de Marco. Ricordo di Gaetano Salvemini, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 12 September 1948; U. Zanotti-Bianco, Antonio de Viti de Marco, Nuova Antologia, March 1962, pp. 337-354 (reprinted in Meridione e meridionalisti, Roma, Collezione Meridionale editrice, 1964, pp. 329-335). See also A. Cardini and R. Faucci, De Viti de Marco, Antonio, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Roma, Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1991, vol. 39, pp. 584-588 and M. Mosca, Antonio de Viti de Marco, in V. Negri Zamagni and P.L. Porta (eds.), Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero, Economia, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2012, pp. 574-578. On his childhood and adolescence, see E. Chirilli, Tuzzo. Preistoria e protostoria di Antonio de Viti de Marco, edited by M. Mosca, G. Malinconico e G. Malinconico, Bari, Cacucci, 2010. On his economic theory see G. Dehove, L’oeuvre financière de A. De Viti de Marco, Revue d’économie politique, 1946, n. 4; the essays collected in E. D’Albergo (ed.), Scritti in memoria di Antonio de Viti de Marco, Bari, Cacucci, 1972 and in A. Pedone (ed.), Antonio de Viti de Marco: tra liberismo economico e democrazia liberale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1995; cf. also among others O. Kayaalp, Antonio de Viti de Marco, in F. Meacci (ed.), Italian Economists of the 20th Century, Cheltenham-Northampton, Elgar, 1998, pp. 95-113; A. Fossati, Needs, The principle of minimum means, and public goods in De Viti de Marco, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28, n. 4, 2006, pp. 427-438; G. Eusepi and R.E. Wagner, Tax Prices in a Democratic Polity: The Continuing Relevance of Antonio De Viti de Marco, History of Political Economy, Spring 2013, pp. 99-121, forthcoming. On his political thought see L. Gangemi, Anteguerra e dopoguerra nel pensiero di Antonio de Viti de Marco, Napoli, Morano, 1945; A. Cardini, Antonio de Viti de Marco. La democrazia incompiuta, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1985; 1 This article will deal with a subject yet to be explored: his collaboration with daily newspapers in relation to his scientific work and political commitment, in the context of early twentieth century Italy, an era which has gone down in history as the golden age of the press2. Much of De Viti de Marco’s work was published in reviews he himself founded, directed and financed at various times. For example, it is well known that he played a fundamental role from 1890 to 1912 in the rebirth of the Giornale degli economisti, for which he wrote the Cronache (Chronicles) from 1897 to 18993; from 1911 to 1913 he invariably published articles in Il Popolo, a democratic weekly of his electoral constituency of Gallipoli4; in 1911 he began his collaboration with G. Salvemini’s L’Unità, in which he wrote regularly from 1914 to 1920, while from 1916 to 1918 he shared its direction. Maybe it is precisely because these platforms were so easily available to him, and because he felt he had to support them, that not many of his articles were published in the daily papers. This hypothesis finds confirmation if we look at the period of his collaboration with the latter: though it extends through a quite lengthy stretch of time (from 1897 to 1922), it is mainly concentrated in the years 1901-1911, i.e. in the interval between the end of his regular writing of the Cronache in the Giornale degli economisti, and the beginning of his weekly articles for Il Popolo and then to L’Unità. He is then a frequent contributor, but not mainly for the daily papers. The starting point for this study is around a hundred or so pieces published in various daily newspapers. They are articles and letters De Viti sent to the papers, interviews, information (referring to articles of his published elsewhere, to conferences he took part in as a speaker, to speeches he made in his electoral constituency or on other occasions, etc). Then there are the accounts of his work in Parliament, in the commissions and the parliamentary groups in which the economist, as House Member, took part. The articles, the letters and the interviews are primary sources of great importance, and will be analyzed in detail, not merely to enrich our knowledge of his thought, but also to discover how a politically committed scholar like De Viti approached and made use of the daily press. The remaining journalistic pieces, on the other hand, are based on A.L. Denitto, Introduzione in A. De Viti de Marco, Mezzogiorno e democrazia liberale, edited by A.L. Denitto, Bari, Palomar, 2008. On his contribution to the history of economic thought cf. M. Mosca, De Viti de Marco, Historian of Economic Analysis, in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, XII, 2005, n.2, pp. 241-259. An overall evaluation can be found in M. Mosca (ed.), Antonio de Viti de Marco: una storia degna di memoria, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2011. 2 R. Brizzi (Mass media e politica: dal telegrafo a internet, in S. Cavazza and P. Pombeni (eds.), Introduzione alla storia contemporanea, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006, ed. 2012, pp. 179-183) recalls that between 1850 and 1915 – before the revolution brought about by the radio – the press had an absolute monopoly in the transmission of information, and that during the first world war it remained the main propaganda weapon. 3 De Viti de Marco acquired and directed the Giornale degli economisti, together with Pantaleoni, Mazzola and then Pareto. His involvement was such that the editorial office of the Giornale was in his own home, as was L’Unità‘s later (Cardini, Antonio de Viti de Marco. La democrazia incompiuta, cit., p. 286). Pantaleoni wrote as follows to Colajanni about the Giornale degli economisti: “De Viti set up a kind of cooperative … Well, I have to admit his system worked a miracle” (letter of 16 April 1897, in S. M. Ganci, Democrazia e socialismo in Italia: carteggi di Napoleone Colajanni 1878-1898, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1959, p. 329). 4 Gallipoly is a small town in Apulia. As well as articles on specific subjects, for Il Popolo he writes a column called La settimana politica (The political week). 2 material already published elsewhere, or comment on interventions not originally intended for the papers; rather than critically examine their content, these materials will be used as sources to interpret, this time, the use the papers themselves made of the figure of De Viti de Marco. On the economist from Salento5 there is an excellent bibliography6, the fruit of meticulous and impressive work by his principal biographer7; it has always been, and continues to be, the only reliable and absolutely indispensable point of reference for his scholars8. Inevitably, given the thoroughness of our scrutiny of the newspapers basic to this study, numerous articles have emerged which may now complete that already wide ranging bibliography; it is quite obvious that only a study like this one, aiming precisely at the systematic examination of the daily press, could provide the occasion to dig them out9. 2. Articles and letters Since many of the articles and letters of De Viti de Marco published in the newspapers are examined here for the first time, we provide a detailed account, but at the same time we have tried to be as concise as possible. The first letter is of 1897, to Avanti!10. By that time the economist, already the author of two important books11, had been teaching in Rome for ten years; in addition to the Giornale degli economisti (for which he had been writing exclusively12 since 1890), he was directing the Economic Liberal Association13 together with Pantaleoni, and was himself aiming to go into politics14.